Walking into the foyer at our hotel was like a scene from a zombie movie … the lights were on, but no one was home. After travelling for 35  hours, we were shattered.!

We flew out of Canberra at around 7pm on Friday afternoon and four flights later we walked into our Hotel at London at 9pm Saturday night … or 6am on Sunday morning in Canberra.

The flights were unremarkable, just long. The only real highlight was a hurried escorted run through Dubai airport to make our connecting flight which was already boarding only for the plane to sit on the tarmac for over an hour while they fixed a door that wouldn’t shut properly.

Popping onto the street from Paddington station with a frazzled brain and only 2 miles to our hotel we grabbed a cab, apologised for the short fare, and got a lift to the hotel.

A bed never looked so good. After sitting for so long, all we wanted to do was go horizontal. Well, maybe after a beer as we spotted some friends to catch up with.

The original plan was to fly into London the morning of the cruise, Stampin’ Up! reps would meet us at the airport and take us the hour or so to Southampton to jump on our cruise ship.

In hindsight, given how shattered we were, I’m so glad we chose to fly-in the night before and pay the money for the 5-star hotel and meet-up with the Stampin’ Up! team there.

We don’t stay at 5 star hotels as we are too cheap and would rather spend our money on other things.  But doing it this way they organised everything else … all we had to do was be at the right place at the right time.

Sometimes, paying the extra money and letting someone else do all the logistics and worry is worth it.

We are now sitting on the cruise ship on the English Channel heading to Norway.